‘Elite: Dangerous’ How Far Would You Go To Obtain The Coveted Rank Of Elite?

Even though space shooters have fallen strongly out of favour with AAA publishers we have seen a few very strong ideas rearing their heads via crowd funding It’s very reassuring to find this genre is a long way from dead and in fact, we are beginning to see a resurgence of older talent regenerating their old titles for the 21st century.

Last year we saw a huge funding success for Star Citizen from Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame. This year we see the long running Elite series popping up on Kickstarter with David Braben pledging to make the best version of Elite yet.

The Elite series started all the way back in 1984 with the first title simply named Elite. Produced from the BBC Micro, Elite revolutionised the video game scene being one of the first games to use wire-frame 3D graphics with hidden line removal, along we being one of the first sandbox games.

Since the original there has been two sequels Frontier: Elite II (1993) and Frontier: First Encounters (1995). The newly created third game: Elite Dangerous has just finished its Kickstarter campaign raising over £1.5 Million ($2.6 Million) beating its funding goal by a fair margin.

Frontier Developments (The team behind the Elite series) are keeping true to the original concept and keeping Elite: Dangerous a full sandbox game. Only this time expect to see sprawling galaxies containing countless planets to exploit. With a very bold claim they also say Elite: Dangerous will be “the largest gaming sandbox ever created” the game does sound very compelling and with your only objective to obtain the rank of “Elite”, space is only the beginning.

Elite: Dangerous reached its funding goal a couple of days ago now, and with the Kickstarter only just finishing expect to see the hard work begin. Although don’t get your hopes up too much as Elite: Dangerous may not be completed before March 2014 (worst case scenario, so who knows).

If you are a fan of sprawling space sandboxes then I can only assume you have already pledged your money to this game. However if you have managed to miss it be sure to check the Kickstarter page and the Official site for more information.

Author

It’s nice to see Indie Game Mag covering triple A studios. No wait the other thing.

We’ve been strung along for almost 20 years by promises of the new Elite game and if it was as good as promised then Braben could have funneled some of the profits from Kinectimals, Thrillville and all the other games over the last 20 years towards funding it themselves rather than expecting the fans to pay for it twice.